Claude Sonnet 5
We recommend using Claude Sonnet 5.5. It scores higher on CursorBench at the same input and output price, with cache reads at half the cost.
Claude Sonnet 5 is Anthropic's previous Sonnet model and replaces Sonnet 4.6. It pushes quality close to Opus while keeping Sonnet's lower per-token price. It supports thinking mode and context windows up to 1M tokens, making it a strong default for everyday coding when you want frontier reasoning without Opus pricing.
Strengths
- Near-Opus quality. Sonnet 5 closes most of the gap to Opus 5 on real coding work while staying far cheaper per token.
- Strong reasoning. Thinking mode handles multi-step tasks, planning, and debugging with depth.
- Reliable tool use. It calls tools purposefully and chains results into follow-up actions.
- Same provider and style as Opus at a lower price point.
Limitations
- For peak quality on the hardest tasks, Opus 5.5 remains the stronger choice.
- The updated tokenizer maps the same input to more tokens, so token counts run higher than older Sonnet models.
Tools
Sonnet 5 has access to all agent tools when used with Cursor including:
Find files by name, read directory structures, and grep for patterns.
Generate search queries and fetch results from the web.
Read file contents, including images for vision-capable models.
Suggest edits and apply them automatically.
Execute terminal commands and monitor output.
Control a browser to take screenshots, test applications, and verify visual changes. See the Browser documentation.
Generate images from text descriptions or reference images.
Ask clarifying questions while continuing to work in the background.
Retrieve rules based on type and description.
Learn more about how tools work and tool calling fundamentals.
Pricing
Sonnet 5 is a third-party model, so it isn't part of the usage included with Cursor plans. On The X Subscription it's billed at the rates below from your prepaid credit. On legacy Cursor plans it draws from the Other Models pool. All prices are per million tokens.
| Name | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| $2 | $2.5 | $0.2 | $10 |
All Sonnet 5 prompts bill at the base per-token rates in the table above, including when context goes above 200k. There is no separate long-context multiplier for Sonnet 5.
A thinking variant is available for deeper reasoning.